Sridhar Mitta, president of EnThink, told The Indian Express synthesizable cores were high-risk, high-reward business. "Even in the US there are no clear leaders. Some big companies are trying to get into this. And then, there are small-start up companies with five to ten people," Mitta said.EnThink itself will start off with a staff of around 15-16.

Conceptualisation, sales and support will be done in the US and most of the development sourced from Wipro Infotech in India. "Wipro has the advantage of having started off as hardware company (in India) with a Research and Development wing," Girish Paranjpe, group vice-president finance, said.

Synthesizable cores are a relatively new businesseven in the US. Fuelled by the increasing complexity of chips and shortage of hardware designers, companies have now started outsourcing hardware design to third-parties. These third party companies do not have any fabrication plants and concentrate exclusively on the design of specific functions. This design is then licensed to OEMs. There can be an upfront fee, and a licence for usage and for number of chips. The royalty can also be sold for a fee.

EnThink will concentrate exclusively on input-output design. The company has already bagged an order from the US-based VLSI Technology. It has projected a revenue of USD 1.5 million for the first year of operations, Mitta revealed.

Paranjpe ruled out any US acquisitions as being for the motive for the setting up EnThink. "The core group has been formed in the US to keep in touch with new developments and get a foothold in the market," he said. Most customers for synthesizable cores are in the US and Japan. He also ruled an ADR issue in the near future.

Themarket for synthesizable cores is currently estimated at $ 1 billion and is expected to touch $ 6 billion in the next couple of years, Paranjpe added. Investments are not very high because the business does not need any physical assets excepts computers and related infrastructure.